PLATTSBURGH, N.Y. (WCAX) – New legislation in Albany aimed at reducing road salt pollution is drawing support from environmental advocates and resistance from some local highway officials.<\/p>\n
Environmental advocates in the Adirondacks say three new bills in the Assembly could help curb the growing impact of road salt on waterways.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has gone from an Adirondack-specific issue to really a statewide crisis now that we have seen one of New York City\u2019s reservoirs to be contaminated by 2050,\u201d said Sawyer Bailey with ADK Action.<\/p>\n
Two of the proposals focus on infrastructure and training, requiring municipalities to build proper salt storage sheds<\/a> within the next decade and creating a statewide training program for road salt applicators.<\/a> A third bill would limit highway departments<\/a> to an average of about 300 pounds of salt per lane mile over the course of a season.<\/p>\n \u201cThis issue is too important to wait on. We need to take the next step, which is this kind of winter average of road salt use,\u201d Bailey said.<\/p>\n Clinton County Highway Superintendent Karl Weiss said he does not believe the state should determine how much salt a municipality uses. \u201cLocality is different throughout the state; each storm is different, roads are different. The highway superintendents and the officials that are responsible for maintaining the roads should be the ones that make the decision what needs to be applied to the roadway,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Weiss said Clinton County has used about 250 pounds of salt per lane mile this winter, not including major snow events.<\/p>\n All three bills are currently in committee.<\/p>\n Copyright 2026 WCAX. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PLATTSBURGH, N.Y. (WCAX) – New legislation in Albany aimed at reducing road salt pollution is drawing support from…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":635098,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,22005,4503,746,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,261011,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,47139],"class_list":["post-635097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-assembly","tag-bills","tag-environment","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-road-salt","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-wcax"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116179356052583780","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=635097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/635098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}